The present invention relates generally to motor control and, more particularly, to a motor drive with velocity-second compensation to reduce tracking error.
This section of this document is intended to introduce various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present invention described and/or claimed below. This section provides background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. It should be understood that the statements in this section of this document are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Rotating motors are typically controlled by a motor drive that receives a reference motor velocity signal and, based on the motor velocity signal, produces and outputs a torque signal that is applied to the motor. Adjustment of the torque signal based on changes to the reference velocity signal relative to a feedback velocity signal ensures that the motor rotates at the reference velocity.
Some applications require precise motor control across multiple, synchronized motors. For example, an electronic line shaft may be employed in a printing application to move the paper or other material over rollers and through various stages of the printing process. Typical printing processes employ multiple colors, each applied at different locations along the line. Hence, to ensure print quality, the various stages are synchronized. A lack of synchronicity between the stations results in misregistration between the colors, leading to unacceptable product that may need to be scrapped.
Previous generations of printing technology employed a mechanical line shaft mechanically linked to the various printing stations. Rotation of the line shaft by an electric motor activated rollers and other printing station tools along the line to conduct the printing process. In a mechanical line shaft system, factors such as play in the mechanical linkages, stretching of the paper web, and torsional flexing of the line shaft itself make it difficult to achieve and maintain synchronicity between the printing stations, especially during periods of acceleration and deceleration of the printing system. It has been observed that when synchronicity is not maintained, product generated includes excessive flaws and is often unacceptable for intended use. Mechanical line shafts also have reduced flexibility in addressing print changes. Hence, where changes are required, down time may be excessive.
More modern printing systems, commonly referred to shaftless printing systems or electronic line shaft systems, employ a plurality of motors and associated rollers that are electrically synchronized, as opposed to mechanically synchronized. Lack of synchronicity in an electronic line shaft results in similar problems, such as color misregistration, evident in a mechanical line shaft system.
When operating a plurality motors synchronously in an automated system, several factors exist that may cause the position of the motors to deviate from each other even though they are all operating pursuant to a single reference velocity signal. For instance, motor inertia between motors at different stations is often non-uniform and can cause one motor to drift from the other motors.
Typical motor drives for controlling motors are implemented using software executed by a central processing unit (CPU). As CPU clock rates have risen, so too has the control bandwidth available to a motor drive. However, higher control bandwidth does not necessarily equate to higher performance. To this end, as bandwidth increases, so does the susceptibility of a motor drive to noise which can lead to operation, rattles, clunks, tendency to resonate, lack of robust performance, etc. In fact, in many cases, the noise level that results from operating a drive at a maximum bandwidth associated with high CPU clock cycles, instead of increasing control performance has been known to degrade performance appreciably. In this regard, most processes have an ideal operational bandwidth that is much lower than the high bandwidth associated with high speed CPU clock cycles. For example, an ideal operational bandwidth may be one or two orders of magnitude less than the bandwidth associated with high CPU clock cycles.
Position errors in a drive system are controlled by a position regulator that acts on the difference between a reference position and a feedback position determined using a position feedback device such as, for instance, an optical encoder. That difference is commonly referred to in the motor control industry using terms such as “following error”, “tracking error”, and “position error”. A key performance measure of a position regulator is to quantify regulator tracking (i.e., how close to zero can the error be maintained under specific conditions). Typically, tracking is evaluated under two such conditions, steady state velocity, and acceleration/deceleration.
Position error in a real system contains a noise component with zero average value and a “DC component” that may or may not be zero. The DC component may be referred to as simply “position error”. Under steady state velocity conditions position error can readily be held to zero using techniques that are well understood in the industry. However, in applications where a high degree of precision is required and periods of acceleration and deceleration occur, known techniques of minimizing the position error have been less successful.
Referring to FIG. 6, a diagram illustrating a graph of velocity versus time during an acceleration event is provided. The position feedback device provides position feedback data at a sampling interval of Tx. The system is undergoing an acceleration, as shown by the ramping velocity. Velocity-seconds, as represented by the triangle areas shown to the right of the velocity curve, are lost between sample intervals of the position feedback device. Because of these lost velocity-seconds, the observed acceleration does not match the actual acceleration, and, hence, the motor controller cannot maintain zero position error during the acceleration event.
Thus, it would be desirable to hold zero position error during periods of acceleration and deceleration of arbitrary rates. For example, in a printing application, it would be advantageous to maintain zero tracking error during periods of acceleration and deceleration to ensure the quality of printed product, thereby reducing waste.